The proper spelling of the project name is PDAL, in uppercase. It is
pronounced to rhyme with “GDAL”.

Why do I get the error “Couldn’t create … stage of type …”?

In almost all cases this error occurs because you’re trying to run a stage
that is built as a plugin and the plugin (a shared library file or DLL)
can’t be found by pdal. You can verify whether the plugin can
be found by running “pdal –drivers”

If you’ve built pdal yourself, make sure you’ve requested to build the
plugin in question (set BUILD_PLUGIN_PCL=ON, for example, in CMakeCache.txt).

If you’ve successfully built the plugin, a
shared object called
libpdal_plugin_<plugin type>_<plugin name>.<shared library extension> should
have been created that’s installed in a location where pdal can find it.
pdal will search
the following paths for plugins: “.”, “./lib”, “../lib”, “./bin”, “../bin”.

You can also override the default search path by setting the environment
variable PDAL_DRIVER_PATH to a list of directories that pdal should search
for plugins.

Why am I using 100GB of memory when trying to process a 10GB LAZ file?

If you’re performing an operation that is using
standard mode, PDAL will read all points into
memory at once. Compressed files, like LAZ, can decompress to much larger
sizes before PDAL can process the data. Furthermore, some operations
(notably DEM creation) can use large amounts of
additional memory during processing before the output can be written.
Depending on the operation, PDAL will attempt operate in “stream mode” to
limit memory consumption when possible.

What is PDAL’s relationship to PCL?

PDAL is PCL’s data translation cousin. PDAL is focused on providing a
declarative pipeline syntax for orchestrating translation operations.
PDAL can also use PCL through the filters.pclblock mechanism.
PDAL also supports reading and writing PCL PCD files using readers.pcd
and writers.pcd.

The idea behind libLAS was limited to LIDAR data and basic
manipulation. libLAS was also trying to be partially compatible
with LASlib and LAStools. PDAL, on the other hand, aims to be
a ultimate library and a set of tools for manipulating and processing
point clouds and is easily extensible by its users. Howard Butler
talked more about this history in a GeoHipster interview in
2018.

Are there any command line tools in PDAL similar to LAStools?

Yes. The pdal command provides a wide range of features which go
far beyond basic LIDAR data processing. Additionally, PDAL is licensed
under an open source license (this applies to the whole library and
all command line tools).

See also

Applications describes application operations you can
achieve with PDAL.

Is there any compatibility with libLAS’s LAS Utility Applications or LAStools?

No. The the command line interface was developed from scratch with
focus on usability and readability. You will find that the pdal
command has several well-organized subcommands such as info
or translate (see Applications).

If readers.las is outputting error messages about GeoTIFF, this means
the keys that were written into your file were incorrect or at least not
readable by libgeotiff. Rewrite the file using PDAL to fix the issue: